Query: Ocean Fairies

Dear Ms Agent,

I'm seeking represetation and querying your interest in a fantasy novel for children (middle grade) of 30,000 words.


Jesse is a young teenage girl who feels like a round peg in a square hole when with other people. But she never stops giggling when with her fairy penguin friends. They make for strange companions: she is long, lean and lovely as a swan while the penguins are roly-poly and cute as ducks. But she knows they like her for who she is: a shy, sweet, mostly inarticulate, nature-loving girl.

When the penguins, who are also ocean fairies with their own kind of magic, promise to take her out on the ocean to see a sunken treasure ship, Jesse is ecstatic. However on that fateful day she meets the most powerful ocean fairy of all, the mighty Selkie. Then she really discovers the rapture of the deep. The merfolk have long been known for their power to enchant a human's senses, and the penguins fear that Jesse will never break free of the merman's irresistible spell and will lose her heart, her mind and her inclination to make delicious tuna sandwiches.

Thank you for your time and consideration of this project.

Yours faithfully,

P.S. Query Critiquers, in Australia we have miniature penguins that are known as fairy penguins. A critiquer of the novel from OS hadn't heard of them and was annoyed by the combining of what he thought was both a real and a fantasy creature, so now I always add this explanation.